Observing as a result of my new toy!

[CaptainTweaky]

An interesting evening this evening just observing - something I very rarely do. But today I received my new toy, a SkyWatcher AZ-GTi wireless goto mount head.

I already have an 'astronomy' tripod, 12v mains transformer, red dot finder, a small Samsung tablet that had become redundant and best of all a William Optics GTF81 that was once again sitting in the garage doing nothing. Hence the AZ-GTi.

I was amazed. For £230 I really was not sure what to expect, but it worked incredibly well. I was able to find and view all the usual suspects with no trouble at all. Sad to say that even after 10+ years I don't really know my way around the sky!

But the star of the show was the telescope with Baader Hyperion 8-24 MkIII zoom eyepiece. Everything was clear as you like even under the muddy skies of Gosport. Mars was an incredible sight on maximum zoom; the entire Pleiades was viewable on 24mm; the Double Cluster at 16mm; the Great Cluster in Hercules and Andromeda both had structure; Albireo was perfect.

I really am that impressed. This device will actually get me observing with my very excellent WO GTF81 and Baader Hyperion zoom, both of which had hardly been used. (Although I did try using the GTF81 in tandem with my Altair Wave Series 115 - not a huge success though as it severely limited what I could image from the observatory.)

One of the photos below is a little blurred I regret to say, but it shows the setup clearly enough.

 

 

[MarkAR]

Looks like a good little set up, portable and quick to get going.

[CaptainTweaky]

Posted by: @MarkAR

Looks like a good little set up, portable and quick to get going.

That it is I'm glad to say. I'm hoping this will encourage me to do a bit of observing while the telescope in the observatory does the imaging! ? 

[Gfamily]

I think this is a brilliant set up, so long as you keep the payload weight within the limits.

I've had one since May and used it with my Mak 127, and it was pretty good with its GOTO. That is, targets were generally at the edge of the field of view at 47x

More recently, I've had the loan of a smaller refractor (72mm ED) and with the lighter scope the GOTO has been absolutely spot on each time.

Under dark skies, this and a small refractor make a perfect combo.

As well as using the SynScan app, I've recently installed the Stellarium Plus app, which allows you to select targets from the planetarium software.